Letter to the editor: Give students many theories

After reading Mr. Reeve's article, Bible through the back door, in Monday's paper, I realized he might not understand "Intelligent Design," or he may be too emotionally attached to see the flaws in natural selection evolution. He clearly does not understand the Constitutional position on separation of church and state. The ...

*Editor’s Note: This opinion is response to a Lake view by Eric Reeve titled “Bible through the back door,” printed Feb. 25.

After reading Mr. Reeve's article, Bible through the back door, in Monday's paper, I realized he might not understand "Intelligent Design," or he may be too emotionally attached to see the flaws in natural selection evolution. He clearly does not understand the Constitutional position on separation of church and state. The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights provides that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...."

Teaching an alternative to the flawed evolution theory is not establishing a religion, it is providing food for thought so that our students can make their own informed decisions. If they don't have an exposure to other theories, their education will be shallow.

I recommend to Mr. Reeve and to anyone else who wants a well-researched, well-written argument for Intelligent Design, the book “I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” written by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek. Dr. Geisler holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Loyola University and has authored or co-authored over sixty books. Mr. Turek holds two masters degrees and probably, by now, a doctorate. An earlier book by attorney Phillip Johnson, “Darwin on Trial,” is another excellent argument against the theory of natural selection.

To truly explain Intelligent Design would take more space than the editors would be willing to give me I expect. But here are some basics to consider. If you walk into your kitchen and set down for breakfast and the Alpha Bits have spilled and written the message, "Clean up your room before you go to school, Mom," would you assume that this message was miraculously written when the box was knocked over and the Alpha Bits spilled or would you assume Mom had written that message with the Alpha Bits?

Obviously, the logical explanation is that Mom has been busy with the Alpha Bits.

Or lets say you are walking through the woods, look down and see a gold Rolex watch. Would you assume the elements came together haphazardly to create the watch or would you assume that some intelligence created the watch and someone lost it while walking in the woods? Again, the logical explanation is that someone with intelligence created the watch which someone lost in the woods.

Let's look at some obvious problems with evolution. Micro-evolution supports small changes that occur within a species. There is demonstrable, scientific evidence that micro-evolution occurs. However, macro-evolution, from the goo to you via the zoo, has never been scientifically proven. Natural selection has never been observed to create a new type of animal. Again it would take a lot of space to show why natural selection has not created new species but the books referenced above provide those answers. A simple way to explain this is the mating of a horse and a donkey which produces a mule. It could be argued the mule is a new species but, unfortunately, mules are almost always sterile so it wouldn't be able to procreate more mules. Cross-breeding dogs has produced some strange looking dogs but the bottom line is that they are always dogs. The fruit fly has been used to test the natural selection theory because the speed in which the generations are produced allows for an accelerated study but, again, all that is ever produced is more fruit flies.

Page 2 of 2 - Even Charles Darwin himself wrote in 1859, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

We now know, due to modern technology, that there are many organs, systems and processes in life that fit that description.

And, finally, not to belabor the point, but the single-celled amoeba which supposedly formed spontaneously in the primordial goo provides an excellent picture of how complex even a single cell amoeba is. A starch Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University, states that the DNA message found in the cell nucleus of a tiny amoeba contains more information than all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica combined. The entire amoeba has as much DNA information as 1,000 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Do you really think that this was a miraculous coincidence brought about by sheer luck? I don't have enough faith to be an atheist or believe in natural selection, do you?

But let me put forward this thought. What would be wrong with teaching children Intelligent Design, along with evolution theory, without quoting from the Bible to make the point? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that if there is an intelligent design behind all of this, there must also be an intelligent designer. But present Intelligent Design without the overwhelming evidence of who or what the designer is. Just present the scientific evidence. This really isn't a battle between science and religion, it is a battle between good science versus bad science.

Unfortunately, today's students only get the bad science because they only get taught the theory of evolution. Why don't we give our children all of the scientific evidence, pro and con for each theory, and let them make up their own minds? Darwinist shutter at this proposition because they lack the faith to believe that their theory will still be believed after the children have seen all of the demonstrable, observable scientific evidence supporting Intelligent Design.